This invention relates to means for rapidly determining the effectiveness of cancer therapy, and to means for augmenting such therapy through the use of antibodies to necrotic or damaged neoplastic tissue that are conjugated to labels or pharmaceutically active molecules.
Modern techniques for the nonsurgical treatment of cancer include both clinical and experimental techniques involving chemotherapy, radiation therapy, a combination of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and immunotherapy. In each instance, the object of the therapy is to kill the malignant cells. Antineoplastic agents presently or potentially useful in such therapy include cytotoxic drugs, biological response modifiers, radiosensitizing compounds, toxins, and radionuclides.
One difficulty associated with cancer therapy is that the effectiveness of a particular therapy varies significantly from one type of cancer to another type of cancer, and even among patients with the same type of cancer. In fact, even individual neoplasms in a single patient may be heterogeneous, having some cells that are more receptive or resistant than others to the particular therapy being utilized. For these reasons, the selection of an effective cancer therapy regimen for a particular patient having a particular type of cancer is not an exact science, but must, in the final analysis, be determined empirically.